Hello, This might be a bit off topic, but as it affects getting speech output it seemed still to topic. I am having trouble getting ALSA output working on my dad's computer. Well I say I am having difficulties, but I can get it working (but not straight away). For some reason it only seems to want to work if you boot the machine and restart it (not actually turn it off, restart with a command such as shutdown -r now), and when it next boots it will have sound. Turn it off (fully with a command such as shutdown -h now) and then the next time it will not have audio until a restart is done. What puzzles me is that comparing dmesg from a time when it works and a time when it doesn't, I cannot find a difference. When it doesn't give output, the modules are loaded, alsamixer can configure the card and even applications which produce audio output don't say it isn't there (they just play as if output is being produced, although it isn't). The card in question is an aureon 7.1 universe using the snd_ice1724 module. I really want to sort this out as I don't like having to take my apollo synth with me when I go to see him (IE. as software synthesis is possible, I want to use that, and my dad could benefit from the speech output as well). Thank you for any help you might give. From Michael Whapples